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Guides to Photo and Document Preservation
and Sharing for Families and Community Historical Societies
Copyright © 2009 - Historical Images of New England LLC - All Rights Reserved.
Sharing Photos and Documents in Image Galleries on the Internet
Sharing photo or document images on the internet is one of the best ways to generate interest in community history and the activities of a community historical or genealogical society. Fortunately there are many inexpensive and relatively simple approaches available, with or without a society website.
Many community historical societies have a desire to establish or strengthen their web presence. Cost and volunteer web design experience have both been challenges. As community education and collection sharing are typical society missions, finding ways to share collection images is often a priority goal.
There are many places on the Internet where images can be displayed and shared in albums and galleries. Some of these sharing sites are specifically designed for individuals to quickly share with friends and family, and some include social networking features such as "tagging" images to allow all users of a service to find all posted images of a common interest. Examples of some sites designed primarily for individuals are Google's Picassa, Yahoo's Flickr, Apple's iphoto, HP's Snapfish, and Kodak's Kodak Gallery.
Some independent sites such as
Shutterfly.comand
SmugMug.com
have
additional sharing features
and services for
professional photographers, and organizations such as historical
societies. Shutterfly and SmugMug each have a "Pro" level service,
which allows a professional photographer, or an organization such as a
society, to offer images for sale as prints or gift items. Prices
for the items are set by the society and Shutterfly Pro Gallery
and SmugMug Pro Account
handle
the complete administration of each sale for a commission.
Image Gallery Criteria and Challenges
Before discussing specific image gallery alternatives further , it is useful to consider what an image gallery should do and why creating an image gallery is more challenging than many other sections of a website.
A user friendly and professional appearing image gallery is
typically characterized by:
● A grouping of small preview images called thumbnails is provided to
offer a quick
gallery overview.
● An enlargement of an image is available when a preview thumbnail is
selected.
● A title and/or caption is available for either the thumbnail or
the enlarged view.
● There are simple and obvious navigation choices among images and galleries.
In its simplest form, an image gallery can be a table of rows and columns into which preview images are positioned. These images can then be made into links to larger versions of the same images, and the enlargements are then displayed in a specified area, a new window, or on a new page. Text is then added and styled as image captions. Navigational symbols, such as arrows, are also added to serve as links to move among pages or galleries.
The biggest challenge in developing an image gallery is the resizing of images of varied pixel dimensions so that they display in a consistent and properly aligned manner within a table or other format. It is possible to individually resize images with image editing software before placing the images into a table. However, this can be cumbersome and requires web design and image editing skills to develop and style the table and to size the images correctly.
Fortunately, there are image gallery software solutions available to help with these resizing and styling challenges. This software will take images of any pixel dimension and automatically size the images as thumbnails and enlargements to properly fit a selected gallery template. Software options range from simple to highly complex as one expands gallery styling options, gallery themes, and animation. Interestingly, complexity does not always correlate directly with price.
Third party gallery services such as Shutterfly.com and SmugMug.com
encourage you to upload images at original pixel dimensions so
that quality enlargements are available to print as needed. These
services have software that produce duplicate image thumbnails and screen enlargements
of your images for professional looking display in their galleries.
The uploaded images are stored separately at the original pixels
dimensions to maintain the maximum print resolution possibilities for
future enlargements.
Basic Society Scenarios
Historical and Genealogical Societies desiring to establish or expand online image galleries can be categorized in one of three ways.
1. The society has a website and wants to incorporate
an image gallery into its website.
2. The society has a website. However, for resource
limitation reasons, it chooses to place images in a third
party album or gallery and then provide a link to the gallery from the
society website.
3. The society does not have a website and displays
images in a third party gallery. The internet address of the third
party image gallery is communicated to society members by email, newsletter,
or other means.
Some Image Gallery Software Choices
Recognizing that many historical and genealogical societies are on a budget and have limited web site design resources, we will first consider some of the least expensive options for developing image galleries. One inexpensive choice that requires little technical knowledge is to establish an image gallery at a third party website. If the society has its own website, it can simply provide a link to the third party gallery. If the society does not have a website, it can simply communicate the link address to the gallery to the society membership.
Third Party Image Galleries - Many online services will store and display your images for free or a modest charge. These services allow you to upload image files directly from your computer, and the services will automatically resize, store, and display your images in professional appearing albums or galleries. Many also offer some ability to customize the appearance of the albums and galleries to create a desired color or text theme.
Shutterfly.com and SmugMug.com
are two of the best services
that have offerings for organizations such as historical
societies, and professional photographers. In addition
to providing image gallery space, both Shutterfly and SmugMug each offer
a fee based service which allows a professional photographer, or
an organization such as a historical society or youth sports team, to market
image prints and gift items as a fundraising activity. To explore
these image marketing and/or fundraising possibilities, explore Shutterfly Pro Gallery
and
SmugMug Pro Account.
For examples of how historical societies have used these third party galleries, see the Greater Astoria (Long Island) Historical Society Smugmug page and the Gilroy (California) Historical Society Share Site at Shutterfly. Note that the Gilroy Historical Society website provides a link to the image album gallery at Shutterfly. This has allowed the Gilroy historical society to share many images without the need to develop an extensive image gallery within the society website.
Some variations on the theme of creating a third party gallery include:
► A simple description of the third party galleries
and a link to them.
► A few resized images on a society website in a
simple table with a majority of images in a third party gallery. This
approach can
take the burden of developing an extensive image gallery away from the
society's webmaster, as other society members can select, caption, and upload images to
the third party galleries.
► A "Share Site" such as Shutterfly's may
include some society images and articles, and another link at the share site or
website may lead to a Shutterfly or SmugMug Pro gallery which offers some of the
images for sale as prints or gift items.
The variations are numerous, and using a combination of services and links may provide the easiest and best image gallery solutions.
Adding an Image Gallery into a Website
As mentioned before, price and complexity of image gallery software are not highly correlated. Some of the most powerful and complex image gallery software programs are very expensive and some are free.
In response to the expense and limitations of many software packages, groups of web designers have collaborated on alternatives. Two such freeware collaborations include Coppermine Gallery and Gallery. Although used commonly by professionals and offered as free features by many website hosting companies, the use of this software requires a fair amount of web design and hosting server operation knowledge. One can quickly get lost while reading through the related setup instructions, help forums, and other user information.
On the other hand, many easy to use and sophisticated image gallery software packages are quite costly and include many bells and whistles that are simply not needed by typical community historical societies. A couple of these to explore include Lightbox Photo Gallery, and Shozam Web Gallery Generator. Most commercially available paid image gallery software packages are priced in tiers with additional cost for software that provides the ability to market images and for business uses.
Some image editing software programs such as
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
A simple solution for a webmaster with some web design knowledge is to download and use a free "lite" version of image gallery software. Many software companies offer a "lite" version of their software in the hopes that you will ultimately purchase a premium version with additional bells and whistles. In the case of image gallery software, these bells and whistles would include many additional customization options, theme presentations, and perhaps animation effects.
In most cases, I believe that many of these bells and whistles actually detract. If a webmaster is on a low budget but still wants to create image galleries within a society website or wants to provide some teasers and links to external image galleries, I suggest that you download and explore Web Album Generator from ornj.net. This simple but effective free software allows just enough customization to blend the color scheme into a website, and provides a simple and clean looking web site image gallery that meets all the basic criteria for an image gallery. Take a look at a sample image gallery created with Web Album Generator. This software uploads images that you select and handles the resizing and creates all necessary gallery files. Once created, you can copy all necessary files to your website and simply provide a link to the "index" page that drives the image gallery. Note that there is a "tip jar" at the download site as the software is donation supported. Also note that I selected the color scheme of the gallery and text.
Image Gallery Conclusions
There are many alternatives and combinations of
alternatives available to expand online image sharing activities.
A society need not have a website or volunteer web design expertise to
get started. Societies with some expertise and a website may still
find it advantageous to leverage their image display activities or even
to market some special images by using inexpensive third party services
available from providers such as Shutterfly.com or SmugMug.com.
If someone
in a society can scan images and place them in a folder on their
computer, the society has the ability to create an online image gallery.
Beyond that, additional sharing and fundraising options are numerous.
Copyright © 2009 - Historical Images of New England LLC - All Rights Reserved.